'God's Plan' To Wipe Them Out?

Does Palin Care
If Alaska's Ice
Melts and Polar
Bears Vanish?


By Tom Hayden

Every child in America should know that Sarah Palin is against saving polar bears from extinction. Then every child should ask their parents, teachers and ministers what the adults are going to do about it.

The first step is to watch the attached 20-second video of a polar bear family searching for ice in Alaska.

http://net4dem.org/cdhome/Polar_Bear_01.mov


Then for a scientific report go to

http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm

Here's the story....

A petition to list the polar bear was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity in February 2005, nearly four years ago. A very cautious Bush Administration agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Agency released a "final rule" recommending that the polar bear be listed as "threatened", which means "likely to become extinct in the foreseeable future." The "primary threat to the polar bear is the decrease of ice coverage", the agency concluded. The report was too timid to recommend any habitat restoration for the bears.

Alaska is shrinking. Polar bears are drowning as they swim in search of distant ice flows. The polar icecap itself now is 700,000 square miles smaller than 20 years ago. The melting this year "may well surpass last year's - the furthest retreat of Arctic ice in a single year since it was first measured", according to the New York Times this week.

Sarah Palin refuses to believe that our oil, gas and chemical-based economy is causing global warming. She doesn't believe in evolution either. So as her state's coastal areas melt away and polar bear habitat disappears, she opposes the "endangered" listing, even suing the Bush Administration.

"Palin's administrration relied in part on research from scientists funded by the oil industry to fight against the polar bear's listing", even overriding Alaska's own polar bear experts.

Adult voters, politicians, lobbyists and consultants seem confused about "trade offs" between maintaining our oil-based lifestyle versus letting polar bears go extinct. [Palin also opposes listing for beluga whales, protections of salmon streams from mining runoff, and shooting wolf pups from helicopters.] Polar bears, whales, salmon and wolves apparently were once part of "God's plan" but now stand in the way of the oil companies. Like the Iraq War, Palin thinks her plan is God's plan too.

Our children are not confused about this. They will have to stand up to the adults before the dimming and darkening of their world.